Handling an undefined variable

Question

I render a partial in one view:

<%= render 'video', :video => @video, :video_id => 'video_show_id' %>

and have this code in the partial:

<% if video_id %>
  <%= link_to "video", video.video_url, :class => "oembed", :id => video_id %>
<% else %>
  <%= link_to "video", video.video_url, :class => "oembed" %>
<% end %>

The problem is that this partial gets rendered in a number of places in my app, and in those other views I do not want to pass :video_id into the partial. Therefore my app throws an error that video_id is undefined. I could pass :video_id => "" into the partial in the other views, but since the partial is rendered in many places, that is kind of a pain. Is there a simpler way to handle this?

Answer 1

Try defined? and not that it really matters but it's actually an operator.

<% if defined? video_id %>